Is pain is caused by bodily attachment, how can painkillers stop the pain?

From Prathamesh P:

Is the experience of pain due to bodily injury a result of attachment to the body? If so, does a liberated person experience pain? Neuroscience explains the mechanism of pain on the bodily level and ways to alter it (e.g. anesthesia). How does this factor into our understanding of pain? Kindly elaborate. Thank you.

Answer Podcast:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Any other questions? Hare Krishna. Question from Prathamesh Prabhu. Is the experience of pain due to bodily injury caused by material attachments to the body? If so, then does a liberated soul experience bodily pain? Neuroscience explains to us the mechanism by which pain is experienced and how that experience can be blocked through anesthesia, for example.
So, how does this understanding factor into our experience of pain? Answer. Firstly, the important point to recognize is that when the soul is in the body and the soul is using the body, then anything that happens to the body will impact the soul. The nature of the impact will depend on the relationship of the soul with the body.
Relationship means the level of the attachment and the kind of identification that is there. So, a simple example to illustrate that is, suppose a person is driving by a rented car, say a taxi and suddenly the taxi has some other taxi come that hits it and then there is a scratch on the bumper or some structural damage is there to the car, minor damage or major damage, whatever. So, now, yes, at one level there is some concern for the car, but there’s not so much concern because the car is simply a vehicle.
Yes, if that car is not good enough to work and if we have to go urgently to some other place, then we will fly another taxi and we will go along our way. On the other hand, if we are going in our own car and if that car meets with an accident, then we will be much more concerned. But now this concern is because for most people, let’s first focus on people who are who are symmetrical.
So, then they are very attached to their car and even a small scratch in the bumper, they may fly into a roadway and want to hit the other person, they have a gun, they may want to shoot the other person also. Sometimes it happens like that. Now, why is this extreme reaction there? Because there is attachment to the car.
So, when the car is a object of utility, it’s going for traveling, this car breaks down, uses some other car and go ahead and yes, that car is breaking down is a matter of concern and if we can do something to fix it, we’ll try to fix it up. But if not, we are not attached to the car, we just take another car and move on. So, for the liberated soul, the use of the body is more or less like the use of a rented vehicle.
Liberated souls know that they are not the body and that’s why they are not too disturbed by whatever happens to the body. So, that’s why they can’t remain transcendental even when the body is breaking down and even when there is great distress and disaster happening at the level of the body. So, that is they are considering the body as a vehicle.
Now, still now going back to the example, I would like to point out some differences. Whereas, we can just easily step out of the car, of one car and go to another car. In general, the soul cannot step out of one body and go into another body that easily.
The transition of the soul from one body to another which involves death and then birth again, it’s quite an involved process. So, in general, if we know that even if it is not my car, if I am stuck in a particular car, so now first I took the example of two different cars and the shifting of the cars would illustrate the point that the liberated souls because they treat the body as a vehicle which they want to use in this world for serving Krishna. So, they may also want to travel and share Krishna’s message, do various services for Krishna and for that they need a functional body.
So, they are concerned about it but they know I am not the body and that’s why the same level of emotional involvement and emotional devastation that people suffer when the body breaks down, they will not suffer that. But at the same time, because within the lifetime, the body is a vehicle that is not changeable. So, if we have a particular body, we are more or less stuck with that body for the lifetime.
So, that’s why if the body breaks down, it has to be taken care of. So, that’s why even liberated souls will take care of their bodies. So, they don’t experience the bodily breakdown as a pain in the way conditioned souls experience.
They experience it more as an inconvenience. The body is a tool for serving Krishna and the body’s breaking down for them is like a car tyre getting punctured. It’s a disruption of their plans and it’s inconvenience which has to be fixed and they will also do the needful to fix it.
So, externally, they may also go to a doctor, they may also do surgeries and they may also take medicines but internally their consciousness is much different. They don’t see the body as a source of enjoyment and certainly they are not identified with the body. They see the body as a tool for service.
Now, so, is the experience of pain due only to attachment? Not exactly because as long as the soul is in the body. Now, I’m using the word pain here. Let’s keep terminology clear.
There is some negative experience. We can call it pain, we can call it inconvenience, we can call it distress. So, on a continuum, if we say very high would be say pain and a little lower would be inconvenience and very high would be say disaster, devastation, breakdown.
So, on that, if we call all of this as a scale of experience of negative emotions, then there the level of negative emotion that we experience will depend on the attachment. But certainly, some level of negative emotion will be experienced by anyone and we shouldn’t say that if somebody is in pain because of their body injury, that means you are attached and if you are truly been detached, you would not have been experiencing any pain. If somebody is in pain, we should see that as an opportunity for serving that person and that person is a devotee, we should see this as an opportunity for Vaishnava seva and we try to do whatever is possible to help the devotee alleviate that pain.
So, bodily pain cannot be wished away just because one is spiritually conscious because although one is spiritually conscious, the body, the soul is still in the body and the soul still has to use the body and just like imagine if a person is driving a vehicle in which one tire is punctured, that person may not have any attachment to the vehicle. But if that person has no other vehicle to move around and is stuck in the vehicle, then that person will somehow have to drive the vehicle with one tire punctured, it is going to be very difficult. So, similarly, if the body breaks down or the body has some injury, then definitely there is some negative emotion that comes up.
So, for a liberated soul, it is an inconvenience, but still it is a negative emotion that comes up So, philosophically, we understand this principle that the extent of the misery that a person suffers because of bodily injury will vary depending on the extent of attachment that is there. But that is for our philosophical understanding. But from an emotional or reciprocal relationship point of view, we should try to see as much as possible, we try to help anyone who is in pain.
And we shouldn’t say that your expense of pain is because of bodily attachment. Now, coming to the point of neuroscience. Yes, so, through neuroscience explains the pathway of the pain.
And when we give anesthesia, then at that time, essentially what happens is the nervous system by through the nervous pathway by which the pain is experienced, pain is passed on, the sensation of pain are passed on to the brain, they are blocked. So, that is something which can be physically done. And that does not reflect the spiritual consciousness or spiritual lack of consciousness.
That is simply a means by which a particular aspect of the body function is artificially stopped. Just like a person by vehicle has a fuel meter. And if somebody disconnects the connections for the fuel meter, then the driver will not see the level of fuel coming on the fuel meter.
That does not mean that the fuel is not getting depleted. The fuel is getting depleted, but just that the driver is not able to see it, not because the driver is liberated or anything like that. Just because there is a disconnection made in the structure of the vehicle.
So, similarly, this experience of pain serves a survival and protection function. When there is an experience of pain at that time, that alerts us to the reality that something is wrong and some corrective action is required. So, if we put our hand in fire and then we experience pain, that reminds us to take your hand out of the fire.
And that way we come out of the pain. So, similarly, the sensation of pain through the nervous system is a bodily mechanism meant to teach us how to protect our body, how to take care of the body. So, it is basically a survival mechanism.
And if that is disabled, then that particular sensation will not come to the body. So, this has got nothing to do with one’s level of spiritual advancement. That is just tampering with the body.
And I am not using tampering here in a negative sense. I am using it in a functional sense. Tampering just as somebody might try to tamper with a device.
So, like that, we can tamper with the body and we can cut off certain sensations. But just as even the fuel meter’s connection is cut off, the fuel is getting depleted. So, similarly, even if the pain sensation is no longer coming because of anesthesia, if there is any problem in the body, the problem is still there.
And unless that is treated, the problem will keep worsening. So, the neuroscience mechanisms like anesthesia, they do not affect in any way the level of spiritual advancement. And the way a devotee transcends pain is by developing higher consciousness, by absorption in Krishna.
And that is because there is higher attachment and there is absence of lower attachment. Whereas anesthesia, there is not absence of lower attachment. It is simply an obstacle or a stoppage of the mechanism by which the pain can be perceived.